Whenever I go to Steam, I know exactly what I'm looking for. I never buy anything without reading reviews first, unless it's a series I've been invested in for years. I feel like the curation problem is more of an issue for the crew because they're looking for games to cover, but as a consumer, I personally don't mind.

I think this is more an issue for developers / publishers more than the consumer. I don't lose sleep at night thinking that we're missing out on the best game ever made because of the amount of games on steam.

Steam is a mess, but that doesn't really bother me. I've long since stopped actually browsing the store. If a game is good, or relevant to my interests, I'll hear about it somehow.

I never use steam for discovery so it's hard to get the same picture of the situation as someone like Vinny who is trying to find something to cover.

That being said I don't know the solution to it either. While I am not a fan of how Valve tries to recuse itself from any sort of responsibility and effort I also do not believe Alex' theory that things could be fixed if Valve hired a bunch of people to curate the games.

I have no idea how the problem of visibility and garbage games can be solved effectively and I think the person who does figure it out could stand to make a whole lot of money.

When I go to buy something (music, videogames etc) I already know what I want.

I used to browse the new releases pretty much every day, putting anything that looked interesting on wishlist to try out later. Every so often I would find an indie game that didn't get a lot of coverage/any coverage at all that I would end up enjoying quite a bit(my favorite example of this is probably Miasmata). Now though, the new release section is filled to the brim with absolute trash. It's like 90% asset flips, RPG maker games, ultra low quality horror games, and indie movies/shorts. Heck, I was checking out the new releases tab the other day and missed Rez Infinite because it was lost in the endless sea of shit.

The difference between Steam and lets say the iTunes music store, is that I don't feel like when I'm just randomly browsing through looking at stuff from artist I've never heard of before, I don't have to go "Is this a scam?". Yeah there is certainly some bad stuff on iTunes, I guess the bad game equivalent would be poor quality soundalike cover albums from some generic name, but I feel like you only end up finding those when your digging deep, while steam is the complete opposite.

100% yes it matters to me. I have opened Steam a record low amount of times this year, and even then everytime I do the front page is slammed with cheap looking garbage games, and god help me if I choose a genre to explore in hopes of finding something.

I'd rather spend time going through Google's Play Store, which should be saying something.

Non-issue for me. I'm not a browser, so I'm heading to steam for a specific purchase.

I have too many games I want to play, I should play, still to get to. Even if I didn't, I have several layers of barrier before shit starts to light up on my radar. If you're one of those dudes taking a gamble on some random Steam game, 1, who are you?, and 2, I applaud your sense of adventure but you are a crazy person.

I use sites other than Steam to look for new games that are on Steam, like the upcoming PC game releases calendar on Metacritic for example. A bit more easy to navigate, doesn't seem to be as much trash on there.

I only open Steam's store page to look at the bar that posts when games in your library get updates. When I buy games distributed through Steam, I usually get them through something like Humble Bundle or GreenManGaming.

Steam is definitely a mess, especially now that we're in the initial deluge of Steam Direct games (hopefully that will slow down once a lot of people realize they're not even going to recoup the $100 fee), but I don't think many people actually rely solely on Steam for discoverability.

I don't know what Valve can do to improve the issue, but I don't think many people rely solely on Steam for discovering games anyway. Most players already have more recommendations coming from friends and their favorite "influencers" than they can actually play.

The only people that really need to be concerned with the discoverability issue are the smaller developers/publishers that can benefit the most from front page visibility. There are a lot of great games that are probably not getting the attention they deserve, and I do hope that Valve can figure out some way to find and surface those a bit better.

I don't like the poll because 1 and 3 are both true.

I really have grown to hate Steam lately. Everything to do with the reviews are awful, the curation isn non-existant, organization sucks, and I feel bad for developers that release into the mess that it is.

Every other platform out there has better customer service too, including Origin which is great for stuff like that but I see people still bitch about like Steam doesn't have all these obvious issues. We need more competition because I don't see Valve giving a shit at all.

I think the reason people get onto Steam about quality control is because they didn't used to have this problem. I have mixed feelings. I don't want to sit here and say that only the games I feel are worthy can be on Steam. But there are a lot of obvious low-effort, barely-playable games that make it hard to get to more obscure, genuine effort indie games. Asset Flip Game #12904 is just another product that drowns out the games that I'm actually interested in finding.

Pretty shocked to see how many people get burned/ mislead on a site that's generally considered to have a lot of techsavvy and game enthusiast folk.

Especially since Quicklooks are supposed to help with that process. I always know what i buy beforehand.

@onemanarmyy: Quick Looks only cover a very very very small percentage of games on Steam.

"Curation" isn't really an issue if you only stick to the popular games that get a lot of buzz, but if you venture outside the obvious and look for more niche or lesser known gems then sorting through all the junk is a huge problem. And not just for the players. It's a problem for developers too if their game gets buried in garbage and doesn't get any of the attention it might actually deserve.

Steam is a mess, but I haven't been mislead or bought a garbage game. I think there are a couple of problems, at least from my perspective:

• It is easy for games to come and go, due to how many new games appear. Some recent releases felt like they vanished after a few days. On a similar note, the new and trending section feels like it was way too abrupt. If I were to look at that section every day, I would probably see something different. Which is obviously the point to a certain extent. However, is an obscure, no name, shoot 'em up and/or visual novel that will disappear from the face of the earth two days from now really trending? Or visual novel #896, that has 4 reviews? (Not that I dislike visual novels, but there are simply too many to keep track of, especially in comparison of the heavy hitters like Steins;Gate, Danganronpa, etc.) Overall, Steam would benefit from having a Featured section. Regardless of the genre or budget, just have a section that highlights new games of quality. Right now it feels like Steam just says, "I don't know, here's seven more games. Hell if I know what the difference between any of them is."
• The issue above doesn't even include the problem with browsing new releases. If you were to browse through the list, then you start to see games like Bequest and Wrestling Revolution 3D or 10,000 pieces of DLC. It should not be a difficult task to find new games that happen to be Ok. You can throw in the short film, movies, and anime service in here too.
• The other issue I'm having at the moment is how Steam is curating things based on my interests. While this is great on paper, it is executed poorly. Out of all of the games that Steam could recommend me, is a some random 2008 game with 200 lifetime reviews where you fight skeletons in a cave really the best they got? Why does it keep recommending me the same C-tier narrative based game over and over again? Why not list things based on what I recently played? Why doesn't it just show me what is in my wishlist, which has over 50 games there?

Ultimately it comes down to there are too many games on Steam, and Valve isn't doing a good enough job showing me what I would be interested in. I still can find the games I'm interested in, but the marketplace does not help with that. If anything, it makes it worse by showing all of the clutter. Valve should just hire a curation team and take it from there.

I think the much bigger issue is for the smaller developers. I guess I hadn't realized it before, but the New & Trending tab on steams homepage really only shows things that are new & or trending from known developers. To see an actual ordered list of the newest releases you have to click New Releases at the bottom, and then scroll down and click the New Releases tab on that page to actually see the newest releases. Many of the games at the top of the list don't actually have a release date or aren't actually out for sale so they shouldn't even be in that section to begin with. Even after you get there I've seen only a handful of games that don't look like someones first time releasing a game. That you have to go through so many steps to even see this signals just how dismal the possibility is for anyone just making their start and releasing something competent has when it comes to pure discoverability.

I know several have mentioned their reliance on other sources to know about games, but even with all the journalists and youtubers/streamers out their finding new things I still don't think there are enough of them to handle the deluge of bad stuff to find the few diamonds or even decent games. As it is so much of the streaming and youtube video creation approach is hoping on the bandwagon game until the well runs dry and then going after the next one.

Valve has released numerous tools to author your experience and try to curate the store, but so few of them work in any useful way. I just went through my queue 5 times and even going through a list of the games steam thinks I like based on games I own and or expressed interest in, it still can't seem to promote more than two games into the list that catch my attention or reflect my interests. I spent the next few minutes trying to find the page that let me change some of those preferences and it had an interesting list of categories it thought I wasn't interested in based on games I had clicked Not Interested for while going through my queue. The categories it chose are Visual Novel, Indie, Action, Adventure, Singleplayer. Other than Visual Novel, which I specifically filter out, all those other categories are both broad and the types of games I've spent HUNDREDS of hours playing on steam. That is a profound example of how badly Valves algorithmic approach is failing to do what they created it to.

I just wanted to capstone this with an image that I think typifies the problem and the reason why a dedicated team of curators hired by Valve is a required step in solving this problem. This appeared in my queue on my second go through. I'd be interested to see the results others have gotten by checking their preferences for game categories Steam thinks they don't want vs what it thinks you do from the games it presents to you in your queue.

@zeik: Yeah that's true. I often don't stray too far from the games that have a good buzz going, or are made by my favorite devs. The last sort of 'unknown' game that i bought was probably Mini Metro.

The problem is that a lot of those smaller games on Steam are hard to find for the same reasons why that particular game was able to be released on Steam. Valve decided to run an open store instead of a walled garden and let the people steer each other by leaving reviews and following like minded curators. That system could (and will) be improved over time. It's not like Valve is not even trying to make that system work better. We've seen huge overhauls of the store already with the discovery updates at the end of 2014 and end of 2016. You can filter tags out. The store tells you why it recommends a game to you. The sales you get shown are based on your account as well. There is a legitimate effort being made on Valve's part to make it better.

I don't think that's a bad choice personally. I rather have a store present me with 100% of the things i want, as well as 'garbage', instead of a store that solely carries A / AAA games, for instance. I remember too many instances at my local library for wanting to read a book that they didn't carry.

On top of that, nowadays It's incredibly hard to distinguish 'garbage' from 'janky with promise'. To some, clickers are literally garbage non-games, while others love those games. I saw nothing in H1Z1, but looking at stuff like PUBG blowing up, games that start janky / broken can still have a lot to love about them and grow into good games over time . Should Valve be the one to decide whether a janky game has enough potential to turn out good later on? Should they decide whether clickers are games that are worth to be sold? It's a hard issue. There are all those survival games out there that people have bought in droves and probably still play in some way? Is Rust a worthwhile product now? Was it ever? Will it become one? Did people move to a new survival game instead? A lot of questions regarding it's quality. But the fact stands that a shitton of people felt like it was worth of their money, so Valve probably did a good job to put that on their store. Even if it registers as garbage to me.

I think the philosophy behind letting the audience make the gems pop out amidst the garbage is relatively sound, but they certainly have a way to go with the tools to make that a better process. Because right now, i'm using Giantbomb, Reddit, Youtube and friends to make the gems stand out and solely use Steam to actually buy the games. Doing this, i have a wishlist that's larger than my wallet, so i don't actually have to rely on the steam store to show me new games. That said, it's also against my personality to buy things on an impulse without knowing what it is exactly, so i'm never going to be someone that relies on the steamstore for recommendations, no matter how good the tools are.

that's legit interesting- would not have considered this to be possible. are you talking from personal experience? because if your choices are influenced by critics...were you burned nonetheless? seems like you'd have a sense of the thing going in if you saw coverage of it.

Complete non-issue, which is why it's so hard to relate to the constant complaints from media/journalists. Generally, most consumers are not going to Steam's store looking to browse for and buy games that they've never heard of; they're going to look at/buy a game that they already heard about by word of mouth somewhere else.

How many people are sitting there saying "alright, I've got $20-60 burning a hole in my pocket and I'm looking to buy a game I've literally never heard of before right now?" Valve 'doesn't care' because it's such a tiny subset of their audience.

Here's a pretty elegant description of the issue that I just saw on Twitter.

I think that sums it up pretty well. Consumers by and large have no issue finding games to play, but there are a lot of games they would probably like that they never hear about.

@chaser324:

Yeah i agree with that.

Problem is, The list of games i know i want is so large , that i don't have the time / money to even consider searching for games i don't know i want.

It doesn't bother me at all as lately (as in the past couple of years) I have moved more towards playing only a few games each year, but playing them with more dedication. Games have become so good at creating worlds and gameplay mechanics that I love mastering them as much as some people love mastering chess.

But I imagine it is a nightmare for developers. They have such a small chance of getting noticed that even if they made a game that someone like me would consider playing in favor of something else, I'd just never look there.

I wouldn't say that I've ever been burned, since I typically rely on friends and sites like this for recommendations, but I would say it reduced my confidence in the product. I'm more likely to buy things from places like GOG where I don't feel like I need to sift through as much shit as on Steam.

Sucks for developers too.

I don't think it should be any harder to get games on Steam, but I do think there needs to be a team of people who sort through the shit and keep it off of my - or any - front page. This is not something that can be automated or community driven.

@chaser324: yup, this. Being "misled" seems like a weird option when it's the only option in the poll. I figured it was just biased into insisting that steam is A-OK because people aren't being misled.

Just a slightly related post because this anecdote was stuck in my head.

I think i'm more likely to burn myself when the amount of games presented is too small.

My biggest burn is probably State of Emergency. I was a kid and went to the city with my dad. At the end of the day, we went to the gameshop to buy a game. I couldn't really find anything that made me very excited, but we drove all the way to the city and i was excited to play a new game. So i picked State of Emergency because it was the new game of the guys who made the GTA games i enjoyed (yes, i was too young, but my parents knew that this stuff didn't rile me up or made me agressive.)

I was not prepared for an timed arcade game that revolves around picking a character and shooting a bunch of rockets around. It's fun for an hour for sure, but it was just totally not what i wanted from a game. Certainly, it being a physical store situation amplifies the issue, but i could see a similar situation arise when you have digital currency for one store, but they only carry a specific type of game (Old games, EA games, Ubisoft games etc).

Despite the issues, Assassins Creed Unity for 5$ seems a relatively good deal, but do i really want to play that game? What if there were 100 other games fighting for my 5$, would i still consider buying Assassins Creed Unity at that point? I think that a store carrying a lot of different stuff is generally a good thing.

@ajamafalous: You appear to be ignoring that the same media/journalists you deride, but would also rely upon to inform you of new games you may not have heard of, also need to find those games to begin with. It doesn't require a plurality of people actively seeking new things on Steam for their to be a need to effectively use the platform to find something. There's a reason grocery and convenience stores place things at checkout isles and isle end caps, people don't always think or know at the moment that they want something until it's in front them and done so in a convenient way.

I'm never really looking for new random games on steam. I know what games I want before I go there. Other than sometimes spending too much time trying to figure out what bundle package of game and DLC i want, I'm fine with their setup, but I'm not search it often.

I really enjoy browsing, and for that reason it is a big concern. I realize that's not necessarily everyone, and it may cause me to spend more money on games I'll never play, but I enjoy it so I do it anyway.

Curation is important, because it helps with discovery of new titles, or titles that are like stuff that I do enjoy. I love trying new games (I try a lot of games, I don't finish many. Just my play style) and love finding smaller ones that I may not have heard of. I can't seem to do that well with steam without going through pages of garbage and THAT is not an enjoyable experience.

I don't browse so it's basically not an issue for me personally but I still think it looks like a nightmare and I'm glad that I avoid it.

I think there is a big issue when you have games that arent even finished being marketed as if they are and then randomly changed to something completely different with no real notice.(for example bequest). At least with most store fronts for music and movies you know you will get a functional product regardless of content quality.

And to keep the grocery and convenience store analogy going, those stores actually have the decency to pull defective, expired or plain bad products off their shelves. Valve seems to be content to leave everything on the shelves and waiting on the first person to get poisoned before doing anything.

Though I think the biggest problem for Valve is Steam's image problem: even on a enthusiast gaming forum, these poll answers point towards a negative attitude towards Steam. But I think Valve is content with Steam being regarded as a bargain dump store?

@mellotronrules: basically just I use Steam so sometimes I just browse it cause it's open. Other times I am doing more research and browsing other sites, looking for deals on Humble or isthereanydeal.com. Honestly for me it gets to a point where I can spend way too much time in the weeds researching, price hunting, and debating buying a game so I just go to Steam, but that clearly has drawbacks.

With my comment I just mean to say I have had both those exact feelings recently with games. It gets tedious to have to go outside Steam so often when Steam could be better. For me, I am down for looking around outside Steam but still think Steam could do a ton to improve itself. I don't get burned "frequently" but I have enough times.

casually browsing through Steam is like going to a Gamestop the size of a Walmart.

I mostly rely on critics or word of mouth to find most games, but the times when I've found a great game like One Finger Death Punch or Bleed through my own volition feels like a miracle. Like I entered just the right thing into a search engine or pored over the games in genre "X" for just the right amount of time. Of course Steam's a mess. Not even a question to me.

Sometimes, that's how I'll decide to spend a half hour or so: watch some Netflix X-Files while I search for some well-reviewed, small, heart-filled games. Because that's the best way I have found to find games of that description I actually like. Obviously, I can play almost any of the high-profile games on console and some of the really great indies will get recommended to me. But finding say, Undertale isn't the problem. It's finding the games that don't want to tell a lore-filled story or have you work on a farm that's the problem. The ones that are still awesome and have "very positive" or "overwhelmingly positive" reviews, but for one reason or another, simply haven't surfaced to the top of Steam nor been previewed by a source I trust.

Not really an issue for me, but I'd never send someone new, or just casually into games to steam. Way too much garbage to sift through. Psn and xbox are drifting in that direction too, I guess. Everything is the app store now.

I own a PS4, a PS3 and a MacBook and iMac that are both a decade old. PC gaming has never been less relevant to my interests than it is right now.

And I sort of enjoy seeing all the trash piling up in the PS4 store, so I imagine I'd have a lot of fun watching weird trailers and reading user reviews on Steam if I owned a PC.

Steam has never been about discovering new and interesting games for me, it's just a place to buy and play games.

Steam is a mess, but I never browse the store looking for something I don't know I want. Unless it's a holiday sale, but even then I usually know what I'm looking for. Steam has never been good at presenting products I would like that I don't know about, so I've never bothered to use it that way. It would be nice if i could find hidden gems in genres that I enjoy, but at the moment it's easier to just follow gaming news and pickup what I know about.

This is the same for me. I go into the steam store knowing what I want.

I feel about the Steam situation the same way I feel about jank in Bethesda games - yeah I can see how it's annoying and unwieldy to certain crowds but overall the experience is workable and the solution isn't nearly as easy as the critics seem to imply without radically reducing other benefits.

At this point Steam is just like Amazon for me: It's a place where I can reliably and conveniently get what I want but suggestions for what to buy initiate among friends, critics, and specific forums.

I think the 2 bigger issues are that 1) critics like the GB crew will only be able to cover a smaller and smaller percentage of releases, leading to the vast majority of games being ignored, and 2) point 1 plus the general haphazard nature of Steam will send devs to other platforms for reasons besides just the financial incentive (i.e. Destiny 2). Eventually Steam may become the Netflix of digital storefronts - a lot of "maybe" stuff, but the premium games will be on a myriad of other platforms.